How do you solve a problem like disqualification?

And make no mistake: The effort to disqualify Donald Trump from holding the presidency once again is a problem—for the US Supreme Court.

Whether Trump should be disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars certain former officeholders from returning to office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion,” isn’t something the court wants to decide. No matter what it does, its decision will anger millions of Americans—and threaten its plummeting public approval rating, which despite a recent uptick is still underwater (44% approval, 55% disapproval).

Alas, the American people expect the Supreme Court to offer the final word on national legal questions of this importance. So, just as they did in 2000 in Bush v. Gore, the justices will have to step up to the plate and decide the case, even if it causes their popularity to take a hit (which happened after Bush v. Gore).

They will most likely tackle the controversy by hearing Anderson v. Griswold, the Colorado Supreme Court’s Dec. 19 ruling saying Trump is disqualified under the 14th Amendment. It is already before the US Supreme Court, thanks to a certiorari petition filed by the Colorado Republican Party in Colorado Republican State Central Committee v. Anderson.

How should Anderson be decided as a matter of constitutional law? Thousands of pages of judicial opinions and legal scholarship have tackled this question, including many thorny sub-questions, and eminent jurists and legal scholars disagree. It’s a question far above my pay grade as Unfrozen Caveman Legal Pundit.

So I instead offer predictions about how the court will handle Anderson, which the justices will almost certainly hear—because they can’t afford not to hear it.

The decision will be based on what University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck calls “constitutional politics,” which is distinct from constitutional law. Constitutional law isn’t irrelevant to constitutional politics, but it’s also not controlling; constitutional politics reflects additional factors like practical consequences, prudential judgments, the reputation and legitimacy of the Supreme Court, and what the justices are willing to spend in terms of political capital.

Now, my predictions. These are nothing more than predictions, and quite possibly wrong. First, the court is likely to keep Trump on the ballot—based on consequentialist concerns, and regardless of the legal merits.

Some 74 million Americans voted for Trump in 2020. How will millions of them react to being told they can’t vote for him again? As Yale law professor Samuel Moyn puts it, “it is not obvious how many would accept a Supreme Court decision that erased Trump’s name from every ballot in the land,” and “rejecting Trump’s candidacy could well invite a repeat of the kind of violence that led to the prohibition on insurrectionists in public life in the first place.” The backlash against the justices from such a ruling is hard to imagine.

To be sure, the current court has ignored practical consequences and public blowback before—most famously in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overruled Roe v. Wade. But Dobbs involved constitutional principles the conservative legal movement has cared about for decades; the same isn’t true of Anderson, arising from an obscure constitutional provision that many Americans (or even lawyers) hadn’t heard of until now.

Second, I predict the vote won’t be the 6-3, conservative-liberal split that characterizes the court’s most controversial cases. Chief Justice John Roberts will struggle mightily to cobble together a coalition that includes at least one Democratic appointee—and at least one, Justice Elena Kagan, should be sympathetic to that goal.

Both Roberts and Kagan are institutionalists who care deeply about the reputation of the court. Both recognize the damage it would suffer if the outcome in this case is perceived as the product of partisan politics. And given the stakes, it’s conceivable that Justices Sonia Sotomayor or Ketanji Brown Jackson might join the majority as well.

Third, I suspect the court will ultimately offer multiple rationales for keeping Trump on the ballot. Why? For starters, there actually are numerous ways to reject the attempt to disqualify Trump, reflected in the welter of lower-court decisions in his favor. The arguments against disqualifying Trump include, but aren’t limited to, the following: Section 3 doesn’t apply to the presidency, which is what the trial judge in the Colorado case concluded; Section 3 isn’t “self-executing,” i.e., Congress must pass enforcement legislation (which it hasn’t); Trump never “engaged in insurrection or rebellion,” as required by Section 3; the challengers of Trump’s eligibility lack standing to sue; and the case presents a “political question” that can’t be decided by courts.